Mother pleads guilty in baby's death

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - A 30-year-old Baton Rouge woman avoided a possible life prison term by pleading guilty to manslaughter and cruelty charges in the death of her infant daughter, whose body was found in the back of a garbage truck in 2002.

JoAnn King, who was arrested in 2012 after DNA evidence linked her to the child, is expected to be sentenced March 10 to 12 years in prison under the terms of a plea agreement. She remains free on bond.

The child is buried at Greenoaks Memorial Park as Christine Noel Love, the name given by a private group called Threads of Love, which provided a funeral in 2002 at Babyland, an array of infant graves at the cemetery.

King's former boyfriend, Matthew Crane, has said he would like to give his daughter the name Cecilia Noelle Crane. He also wants to make a victim impact statement at King's sentencing.

King was charged with second-degree murder, which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison upon conviction.

The Advocate reports Monday's plea agreement calls for King to receive a 12-year prison term on the manslaughter charge without benefit of probation, parole or suspension of sentence. After she is released from prison, she will be on supervised home incarceration for five years. If she violates that portion of her sentence, she could be ordered to spend another 10 years behind bars.

King's court-appointed attorney, Fred Kroenke, said King was all alone when she delivered the extremely premature child in a car on a cold and rainy night in December 2002. He said King is bipolar.

"She does not think she deserves 12 years, but she definitely knows what she did was wrong and is incredibly remorseful," Kroenke added.